Privacy Policy

Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival (Hot Docs, us, we, our) respects your concerns about privacy. This privacy notice describes the types of personal information we collect from customers, how we may use that information, and with whom we may share it. Our privacy notice also describes the measures we take to protect the security of your information.

Hot Docs is committed to protecting your privacy and the personal information we collect about you. In keeping all our customers’ information strictly confidential, we will not sell, rent, loan or trade your personal information to any organization or individual outside Hot Docs. We may share your information with a third party if it is necessary to carry out your transaction or comply with any legal obligation.

What is personal information?
“Personal information” is personally identifiable information such as your name, residential address and e-mail address and includes information about your product and service subscriptions and usage, credit card information and billing records.

Your name, billing/shipping address, email address, telephone number, and credit card information, including card number, card type, cardholder name and expiration date, when you purchase products or services from us such as tickets for Hot Docs events, concessions, merchandise. We also obtain this information from you when you become a Hot Docs member or patron

Personal information you provide to us when you participate in any Hot Docs events, including submitting your film or work for inclusion in any events, programs or funding opportunities, or applying for accreditation for a Hot Docs event or program. This personal information may include your name, address, email address, phone number, date of birth, job title, occupation, nationality, travel itinerary, residence information, biography, newsletter preferences, IPD address and organization.

Personal information you provide to us when you participate in any of our online or other meeting spaces or forums. This personal information might include your name, profession, e-mail address, phone number, photograph, answers to specific questions, password and computer information.

Personal information you provide to us when you participate in one of our contests or surveys. This information may include your name, email address and street address, and the answers to survey questions. The personal information you provide to us when participating in these promotions, surveys and contests may be used for marketing purposes.

Personal information you provide to us when subscribing to our newsletters or emails or when you use our website. This personal information might include your name, member/buyer identification, e-mail address, phone number, password and computer information.

Your personal information from our business partners and other third parties provided they have agreed to obtain your consent before disclosing your personal information to us.

Photographs, motion pictures and videos taken of you in public areas at Hot Docs events, including the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.

Certain technical information from your computer each time you request a page during a visit to our websites www.hotdocs.ca and www.hotdocscinema.ca. This information is collected from your computer’s web browser to enhance your experience on our website and may include your IP address, operating system, web browser software, screen resolution, and referrer website.

Personal information you may provide to us when applying for a job or volunteer position with Hot Docs.

How does Hot Docs collect personal information?
The purpose for collecting personal information is identified at or before the time it is collected. We collect and use personal information that is voluntarily provided to us by the consent of our customers, members, sponsors, website users and the public in general when they contact us via telephone, e-mail, web browser, or in person. We limit the personal information we collect to that which is necessary for us to conduct business.

As mentioned above, we may also collect personal information from our business partners and other third parties who have agreed to obtain the consent of the person the information pertains to before disclosing the information to us.

Hot Docs may also collect personal information through the following means:

Photographs and videography in public areas at Hot Docs events.

Cookies. a piece of data stored on a website user’s computer containing information about the user. Cookies, by themselves, cannot be used to disclose your individual identity. A cookie will identify your browser, but not you, to our computer servers when you visit our website. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies, but you can set your browsers to refuse cookies. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may be limited in some areas of our website.

Web tags. To assess the effectiveness of promotional and marketing e-mails we send, we also attach a tag to the email that provides us with confirmation when the recipient opens the e-mail. This only occurs if the recipient’s computer supports such technology.

Why does Hot Docs collect your personal information?
The personal information we collect is only used, disclosed or retained for its original intended purpose (unless you provide your consent to a different use or disclosure) and we retain it only as necessary for those purposes. Hot Docs may collect personal information about you and use it following ways:

To provide products and services to you, to inform you of promotions, programs and events, to provide information about purchases, to bill you when you make a purchase, to acknowledge support or donations and provide that information to the Canada Revenue Agency, and to contact you when necessary for these purposes.

To administer your submissions and applications for our programs, events and funding opportunities, to facilitate networking and market activities and for market data analysis. When you register as a member or industry delegate, we use your information to create and manage your account.

For marketing purposes, we may use your contact information to send you promotions, surveys, contests, programming updates and other marketing information. Promotional emails are intended to inform you of opportunities, events or special deals available to you from Hot Docs. You can opt not to receive emails by either clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom of any email, clicking “update preferences” at the bottom of any email, or sending an email to [email protected] with a request to be removed from promotional email lists. In addition, we may send you postal mail to inform you of promotions, surveys, contests, programming updates and other marketing information. You can unsubscribe from this postal mail service by contacting [email protected] with a request to be removed from postal mail lists.

To improve the quality of your visit to our website. Using electronic information such as “cookies,” we collect information based on your navigation of our website to better understand and server our customers, members and website visitors. This data allows us to enhance your ability to navigate our website and develop programs and content that will be of interest to our customers and website visitors.

To improve our service offerings. We monitor and analyze the use of our service offerings to determine which services are popular and useful to our customers, members and website visitors so that we can improve them.

To better understand your interests, Hot Docs may prepare aggregated user statistics or information summaries to describe our services and their popularity to our partners, prospective advertisers and for other lawful purposes. The aggregated user statistics and information will not contain any personally identifiable information.

To provide a secure and safe environment for our visitors and employees.

To co-operate with law enforcement and to protect against violations of criminal or civil laws.

Photographic, video and film cameras are only used to (a) protect Hot Docs, its customers and employees against security issues, including potential violations of civil and or criminal laws and (b) for our marketing purposes with respect to Hot Docs events and services.

We may use your personal information to respond when you submit a question or suggestion to us, or when you request assistance with your membership, registration, donations, viewing your purchase(s), logging on to www.hotdocs.ca or www.hotdocscinema.ca, or accessing your account from our website.

The Disclosure of Personal Information
Hot Docs is committed to protecting your privacy and the personal information we collect about you. In keeping all our customers’ information strictly confidential. We will not sell, rent, loan or trade your personal information to any organization or individual outside Hot Docs. However, Hot Docs may share your personal information with third parties when that party has been hired as a service provider for commercial transactions (e.g. ticket sales, pass sales, etc.).

Hot Docs takes steps to ensure that any third-party service providers are committed to maintaining privacy of such information as outlined in this Privacy Polity.

At times, Hot Docs provides a service to partner festivals and Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema rental parties by processing ticket orders to their events. We disclose this information to the partner festival for whom we performed this service, for their promotional and advertising use under their own publicly available privacy policy.

How Hot Docs Protects Your Privacy
The security of your personal information is a high priority for Hot Docs. Security measures, such as restricted access, locked filing cabinets, and the use of passwords and encryption have been adopted to protect your personal information against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification. Our employees have been trained to respect your privacy at all times. Employees with access to your personal information are required to use it strictly in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable laws.

For information submitted to our website or email addresses, we maintain online safeguards to protect against unauthorized disclosure, use, alteration and destruction of the personal information in our possession. To protect the security of your credit card information, we use the industry standard for Internet security—Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. This technology allows us to ensure the integrity and privacy of your personal and credit card information to be transmitted via the Internet.

Hot Docs will keep your personal information only as long as it remains necessary or relevant for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy or as required by law.

There are several places throughout our websites, www.hotdocs.ca and www.hotdocscinema.ca, that may link you to other websites that do not operate under Hot Docs’ Privacy Policy. When you click through to these websites, Hot Docs’ Privacy Policy no longer applies. We recommend that you examine the privacy statements of any third-party websites you visit to understand their procedures for collecting, using, and disclosing your information. Hot Docs makes no promises, warranties or representations about these third-party websites and bears no liability whatsoever for your use of them.

The internet is, by its nature, inherently open and subject to interception of information. We cannot guarantee that information you provide to us over the internet or otherwise will not be intercepted by third parties while it is being communicated by means that are outside of our control.

Your Consent
By choosing to provide us with your personal information you are consenting to its collection, use and disclosure in accordance with the principles outlined in this Privacy Policy. If you are under the age of 18, you must not provide any personal information to us without the consent of your parent or guardian, or as otherwise provided for by applicable law.

Hot Docs encourages you to review our Privacy Policy on a periodic basis. This Privacy Policy may be updated from time-to-time and your subsequent attendance at a Hot Docs event or Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, use of our services, or use our website will be your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your information as set out in this Privacy Policy.

If you don’t want Hot Docs to collect, use or disclose your personal information as outlined in this Privacy Policy, please tell us at the time the information is requested or collected.

Verifying and Amending your Personal Information
Hot Docs tries to ensure that all personal information about you that is in our possession is accurate, complete and up-to-date. To enable us to do so, please inform the person to whom you provided your personal information of any change to that information.

You can access or make changes to your personal information held by Hot Docs at any time. You can also request a copy of your personal information held by Hot Docs and that we delete any of your personal information held by Hot Docs.

Festival and cinema audience members are encouraged to contact our box office at 416.637.3123 or send an e-mail to [email protected] for assistance with these matters.

Industry delegates are encouraged to contact [email protected] for assistance with these matters.

If there will be any charge for responding to your request, Hot Docs will advise you in advance. In some cases, Hot Docs may be prevented from disclosing the requested information to you. If any request you make for access to personal information is denied, we will provide you with an explanation.

Resolving Your Concerns
If you have any questions or concerns about Hot Docs’ personal information collection, use and disclosure practices, please let us know and we will do our best to help you. If you have any questions or concerns about this policy, please contact us. Subsequently, you can contact the Privacy Commissioner of Canada if you would like to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.